Did you know that iOS makes it very, very easy to instantly remove the background from any image? This feature was first introduced with iOS 16, and I’ve found it to be one of the best and most useful capabilities over the last 18 months. Here’s how it works.

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Macworld

iPhones are remarkable devices, but they lose their lustre once the battery runs dry. That’s why it’s important to look after the cell inside and ensure that you always charge it properly.

In this article we explain the steps you need to take if you want your iPhone to last till the late hours each day and keep doing so for as many years as possible.

How to charge an iPhone with a cable

The fastest way to charge an iPhone is using a cable. Until the iPhone 15, this meant using a USB to Lightning cable. From the iPhone 15 on, you need a USB-C to USB-C cable.

But it’s not quite as easy as that. For the fastest charge, that Lightning cable needs to connect to a USB-C charger so you need a USB-C to...

After years of waffling, I decided that it was time to update my workspace to be more friendly to on-camera work, reviews, tutorials, product photography, podcasting, etc. Instead of having a space that I sometimes use for work, sometimes for study and entertainment, and sometimes for editing, I decided to switch it up and wholly dedicate it to video and photo production.

This setup is primarily powered by a 14-inch MacBook Pro connected to a single Thunderbolt cable. It’s also made possible by a whole host of software, including MovieRecorder, a pricey but fantastic application from Softron. MovieRecorder allows me to simultaneously record high-quality HEVC-encoded video in a multi-cam setup from multiple cameras directly to my computer, bypassing SD Cards of CFexpress cards entirely.

As you’ll see in my hands-on video, I’ve done many other things to customize my setup for productivity, and I hope you find it enlightening...

elago is launching a today that looks like a Game Boy Advance SP. The new MS W5 Charging Stand debut with a retro design that’s a bit more recent than some of the other throwback-themed accessories we’ve seen from elago and channels the vibes of Nintendo’s folding handheld.

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Macworld

If you’re looking for a new laptop, the newest 13-inch MacBook Air is a perfect option for most people, especially when it’s on sale: Amazon is selling the 13-inch MacBook Air with 256GB of storage for $989, a savings of $110 and the best price we’ve ever seen.

The 13-inch MacBook Air has the same thin and light design as the M2 model with a new M3 processor and the ability to...

Friday is wrapping up the work week with a fresh batch of Apple deals. The savings today takes $110 off 13-inch M3 MacBook Air at a new all-time low of $989. You can also save $100 on Apple Watch Series 9, which has the 45mm model matching its low of $329 alongside 41mm styles from $299. Plus, the best price of the year drops the . Hit the jump...

iPhone Sales Slump in China Despite a Significant Uptick in Smartphone Shipments

Canalys’ latest research shows that the smartphone market in China has rebounded after two years. The smartphone shipment had a drop of 18% in 2022. The bad news is that Apple has lost its sheen in the Chinese market. The company has literally plunged from first place to fifth place despite the significant growth in […]

This post iPhone Sales Slump in China Despite a Significant Uptick in Smartphone Shipments appeared first on The Mac Observer

Apple is cracking down on a category of AI image generation apps that “advertised the ability to create nonconsensual nude images.” According to a new report from 404 Media, Apple has removed multiple AI apps from the App Store that claimed they could “create nonconsensual nude images.”

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Macworld

If you are running out of space on your iPhone you may be looking at the huge amount of space being attributed to Photos and thinking that deleting all the photos from your iPhone would be an easy way to increase your storage.

You may have heard of iCloud Photos and wondered if that would be a way to back up your photos so you can delete them from the iPhone. Or you may already be using iCloud Photos and think they are all backed up in iCloud and can be deleted from your iPhone. But you’d be very wrong!

iCloud can be a little confusing: it’s not a backup it’s more of a sync. So rather than being a way to free up space on your iPhone, it’s more of a way to make everything available on all your devices. That’s not to say you can’t use iCloud to make more space on your iPhone, you can, but probably not in the way you think.

So, in this article, we will explain how you can reduce the amount of space photos...

Macworld

Earlier this week we got some surprising news out of Cupertino. After weeks of reported delays, Apple announced that it will be holding an event on May 7 with the tagline Let Loose that will presumably feature new iPads. That would make a whopping 559 days since the announcement of the 10th-gen iPad and...

It never hurts to have insurance for all your devices and Verizon may have just upped its game in this department. The wireless carrier announced an update for its Home Device Protect plan that repairs or replaces an unlimited number of devices from computers, game consoles, smart home devices, TVs, and now robot vacuums, healthcare […]

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Macworld

While travel costs continue to rise steadily, that doesn’t mean you have to ditch your vacation dreams. With OneAir, a members-only travel app, you can save on your travel planning by letting this platform’s AI find the best airfare deals.

Through April 30, you can grab lifetime access to the OneAir Elite Plan for only $79.97 (reg. $790).

By leveraging cutting-edge AI technology, ...

How To Install iOS 17.5 & iPadOS 17.5 Developer Beta

Are you looking to test beta iOS updates? iOS 17.5 and iPadOS 17.5 are the latest Public and Developer Beta versions that you can install on your iPhone and iPad, respectively. They ironed out several bugs for an overall smoother user experience. One noteworthy change is when it finally stopped the predictive text system from […]

This post How To Install iOS 17.5 & iPadOS 17.5 Developer Beta appeared first on The Mac Observer

Verizon has another price increase on the way. In an email to customers on Thursday, the company revealed a $5 per month price increase affecting plans tied to Apple Watch and other connected smartwatches.

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Enlarge (credit: Getty Images)

In the world of AI, what might be called "small language models" have been growing in popularity recently because they can be run on a local device instead of requiring data center-grade computers in the cloud. On Wednesday, Apple introduced a set of tiny source-available AI language models called OpenELM that are small enough to run directly on a smartphone. They're mostly proof-of-concept research models for now, but they could form the basis of future on-device AI offerings from Apple.

Apple's new AI models, collectively named OpenELM for "Open-source Efficient Language Models," are currently available on the Hugging Face under an...

Pretty much every tech company has been investing in generative AI for the past two years, and Apple is rumored to finally bring new AI-based tools to iPhone users soon with iOS 18. However, the costs of operating such tools are quite high, and Meta has just confirmed that it will take years for the company to make money from AI.

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If you’re looking to take your desk setup to the next level, this is the guide for you. Head below for some of my favorite products that can improve your working setup, ranging from accessories to decorations and more. All the things on this list are things I’ve personally used and can vouch for.

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I was recently lucky enough to go on a great vacation where we spent eight days traveling across Europe. One of the things I noticed was just how helpful my iPhone was throughout this experience. Yes, we all know that we can use maps to help us navigate new cities and geographies. But did you know that you could convert currencies directly in the Notes or iMessage apps? Or that you could create a shared library so everyone on the trip can see all the pictures you took. I found over 25 iOS features that are specifically built into iOS to enhance and make your travels easier.

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Apple Card has shared its latest promotion for customers – 10% Daily Cash up to $50 back on purchases at Nike. Here are the details…

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Satechi is out with its first CES announcements today. The new SM1 Slim Mechanical Backlit Bluetooth Keyboard for Mac, iPad, iPhone, Windows, and more is available now. And coming soon Satechi has a foldable 3-in-1 and 2-in-1 Qi2 charger stand.

Update 4/25/24: The 3-in-1 Foldable Qi2 Wireless Charging Stand and the 2-in-1 Foldable Qi2 Wireless Stand are now available direct from Satechi priced at $129.99 and $79.99, respectively.

...

Macworld

Apple makes very good keyboards, but some users don’t like the feel of the keys–that’s important, especially if you spend most of your day working at your Mac. Many people like the clicky feel of a mechanical keyboard, and you can get a discount on some clicky goodness on Amazon.

Amazon is selling the Logitech MX Mechanical Mini for Mac keyboard for 26 percent off the regular price–it’s $111.51, down from the regular price of $150, the best price we’ve ever seen. It’s a mini keyboard, so it doesn’t have a number pad, but it has low-profile keys and a backlight that automatically adjusts to your room’s lighting. It connects via Bluetooth, charges through USB-C, and is available in a classy pale grey and white combo. Logitech also...

Apple has rejected Spotify's new version of its iOS app with in-app pricing information for users in the European Union, the audio streaming firm said on Thursday. Reuters: The Swedish company submitted a new version of its app to Apple with basic pricing and website information, which is a minimum requirement under the European Commission's ruling in its music streaming case, it said in a post on X on Wednesday. Spotify said the Cupertino, California based-Apple rejected its update in a response directly sent to the company.

"Apple has once again defied the European Commission's decision, rejecting our update for attempting to communicate with customers about our prices unless we pay Apple a new tax. Their disregard for consumers and developers is matched only by their disdain for the law," a spokesperson for Spotify said in a statement. In March, Brussels fined Apple with 1.84 billion euros ($1.97 billion) for thwarting competition from music streaming rivals via...

Macworld

The iPhone 15 is lots of things, but it isn’t indestructible. Drop it, knock it, or scratch it, and it will suffer damage that no one would wish on their expensive new purchase. The most obvious way to protect your iPhone 15, 15 Pro, 15 Plus, or 15 Pro Max—aside from leaving it in the box—is to buy a case that will take the hard knocks and scrapes, leaving your iPhone as Apple intended.

A case is more than just a pretty backplate, so we have some expert tips for you to start. We have tested a wide range of iPhone 15, 15 Plus, 15 Pro, and 15 Pro Max cases. Here you can jump straight to the cases that most appeal to you.

We have tested plain cases, wallet cases, cases that support bike and car mounts, pouches, sleeves and cases with belt-clips.

• Best clear cases
• ...

Macworld

I don’t need to have a new iPhone every year, just the procedure of changing over with various authentications is sometimes a bit annoying. What’s more, the iPhone has matured to such an extent that there are only evolutionary changes from year to year, rarely an innovation that really knocks my socks off.

A new device every three to four years, possibly a replacement battery in between—that’s quite enough. After three to four years, a new iPhone really does feel revolutionary compared to the old one.

But now I’m in the situation of having to change every year for professional reasons. Because even if the innovations from generation to generation are rather sparse, iI need to be familiar with each annual upgrade to make sure I give our valued readers the best possible information. But which model is best for me?

Deciding on a downgrade

In recent years, I have had a red...

Setting up a VPN on your Apple TV 4K allows you to avoid geographic region restrictions and access services not normally available to you. With tvOS 17, VPN apps can now be installed on the Apple TV directly.

VPN apps available now for Apple TV include NordVPN, PureVPN, IPVanish, ExpressVPN, and more. Here’s all the best VPN apps for Apple TV available now …

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There may be some cool stuff en route for Apple’s special event on May 7, which was announced on Tuesday. The company may have also dropped some interesting hints into the invitation, including a pencil icon that could indicate a next-gen Apple Pencil within the works. In a post on X, Apple CEO Cook shared […]

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Macworld

Whether you’re streaming or browsing online, we can all agree that ads pose a serious annoyance to any digital experience. Fortunately, you can rid your browser of ads, protect yourself and your devices from malware, and more with AdGuard.

AdGuard is a comprehensive security solution offering data privacy tools for life. Now, the Family Plan is less than $25 through April 30.

Compatible with iOS and Android operating systems, AdGuard provides users with impressive ad-blocking support. It can ...

Macworld

If you need to move text, an image or another object from one part of a document to another, or from one app to another, you need to use copy (or cut) and paste. On a Mac or MacBook, the keyboard shortcuts for this are different from other devices, so if you are coming from Windows you might be confused.

We’ll explain the simple steps you need to take to cut, copy and paste on a Mac. Our tips will show you how to copy and paste on a MacBook Air, MacBook Pro, iMac, Mac mini or any other Mac.

We’ll also cover how to copy and paste using the keyboard on a Mac and copy and paste using a Mac mouse or a trackpad, how to paste without formatting, how to copy multiple items on Mac, and...

Macworld

With news that iPadOS 18 might bring a calculator to the iPad we’ll refresh our memories as to why the iPad doesn’t have a calculator right now, and what the alternatives are if you want to do some math and it’s the only device you have handy.

Ever since the iPad first arrived, there’s been a curious omission in the apps that come preinstalled by Apple. Whereas the iPhone, Mac, Apple Watch and even the iPod touch feature a calculator as standard, there’s never been one on the iPad.

Why is that? Of all the platforms, it’s probably the one most suited to the task, especially if it was one of the scientific variety with all the additional capabilities.

We’re not ones to leave a stone unturned, so we set out to find why the iPad comes calculator-free.

The Steve Jobs story

In preparing this article...

Meta has been experimenting with a lot of new features for Threads, its microblogging platform. Now Instagram boss Adam Mosseri revealed on Wednesday that the platform has started testing an option that will let users automatically hide old posts from Threads after a certain period of time.

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Incident began at 2024-04-24 15:00 and ended at 2024-04-24 21:17 (times are in Coordinated Universal Time (UTC)).

The issue with users creating unauthenticated support cases for account recovery help using toolbox has been resolved for all affected users as of Wednesday, 2024-04-24 14:17 US/Pacific.

From our preliminary analysis, the root cause of the issue is a recent roll out. Our engineers rolled back to last stable version hence mitigating the issue.

We thank you for your patience while we worked on resolving the issue.

Affected products: Google Workspace Support

Apple is losing another important director as a new report from Bloomberg has just revealed that Frank Casanova, currently senior director and head of product marketing for Apple Vision Pro, is retiring after working at the company for 36 years.

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We’re not far from the first official look at iOS 18 at WWDC 2024 on June 10. Whether you’d like to test out the new OS as soon as the dev beta is available or you’ll wait for the public beta or public launch, follow along for when to expect the iOS 18 release date.

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Apple is believed to be working on “the biggest overhaul yet” to the Apple Watch’s design. A new rumor today indicates that the next-generation Apple Watch could include a design change that frees up more space inside for other components – or that makes the device thinner.

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Just as Google, Samsung and Microsoft continue to push their efforts with generative AI on PCs and mobile devices, Apple is moving to join the party with OpenELM, a new family of open source large language models (LLMs) that can run entirely on a single device rather than having to connect to cloud servers. From a report: Released a few hours ago on AI code community Hugging Face, OpenELM consists of small models designed to perform efficiently at text generation tasks. There are eight OpenELM models in total -- four pre-trained and four instruction-tuned -- covering different parameter sizes between 270 million and 3 billion parameters (referring to the connections between artificial neurons in an LLM, and more parameters typically denote greater performance and more capabilities, though not always).

[...] Apple is offering the weights of its OpenELM models under what it deems a "sample code license," along with different checkpoints from training, stats on how the models...

Apple was hit with a $2 billion fine in the European Union last month for “abusive” App Store rules for music streaming services. In addition to the fine, the European Commission also said Apple must relax its anti-steering rules.

As reported by TechCrunch, Spotify has submitted a new update to its app that includes pricing information for users in the EU. Spotify also says that it is not planning to opt into Apple’s new business terms in the European Union offered in response to the Digital Markets Act.

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CIRP is out with a report on how iPhone activations compare to Android in the US. The latest data shows a notable drop over the last year bringing Apple’s US smartphone market share of new activations back in time six years.

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Wednesday’s best deals come headlined by a $300 discount on Apple’s 15-inch M2 MacBook Air. Those who won’t be upgrading to the new iPad Pros in May can also score an all-time low on the new Apple Pencil with USB-C at $69. Plus, save on 15W MagSafe chargers and more. Hit the jump for all that and more in the latest 9to5Toys Lunch Break.

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President Joe Biden has officially signed off on a bill that requires TikTok parent company to divest the app within the next nine months. Should ByteDance fail to do so, TikTok would effectively be banned in the United States and removed from Apple’s App Store.

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Macworld

Sometimes, you need to turn a piece of paper into a digital file. Maybe you need to include a receipt, registration, or other form of proof in an online form. Or, you want to keep copies of your important documents in the cloud, so they’re always accessible and safe from being lost or destroyed. Such documents are often digitized as Portable Document Format files (or PDFs).

It used to be that you needed to use either dedicated hardware or a third-party iPhone app to take a photo of a document and convert it to PDF. That is no longer the case: Apple includes a very handy document scanner in the iPhone’s Notes and Files apps, and it does a surprisingly good job of capturing most documents and converting them to PDF. Because it’s not very obvious, you’d be forgiven for not even knowing it exists.

Here’s how you scan documents using an iPhone. We also cover how to convert the scan into a PDF and how to autofill the...

Ahead of iOS 18’s debut at WWDC in June, Apple has released a family of open-source large language models. Called OpenELM, Apple describes these as: a family of Open-source Efficient Language Models.

In its testing, Apple says that OpenELM offers similar performance to other open language models, but with less training data.

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Starting in May, Apple is launching a new Today at Apple series at its retail stores focused on small business owners and entrepreneurs. Apple says that these sessions will offer “free opportunities to learn how Apple products and services can support their growth and success.”

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Another stolen car has been recovered thanks to a hidden AirTag, this time in California. Speaking to NBC News, Philip Obando said that he woke up and walked out of his house to find that his BMW was gone.

Thanks to the hidden AirTag and dashcam video, Obando was able to get a pretty clear idea of when the car was stolen, who stole it, and what the thief did with it.

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Macworld

The iPhone 16 lineup will bring in more money for Apple than anything else this year. As many other parts of the company (namely services) are growing, the overall fortunes of Apple still rise and fall on iPhone sales. You would think that would make the iPhone 16 Apple’s most important product this year, but no. That distinction belongs to iOS 18; or more specifically, the on-device AI features it is expected to bring to our pockets this fall.

For better or worse, it’s all about AI these days. Every tech company has to have a “leader in AI” story to satisfy investors, even if users are starting to get bored with AI chatbots already. And Apple, though the company has used lots of AI and ML (machine learning)...

Sometimes it’s the celebrity shots that give away nifty forthcoming products on the horizon. Prior to Saturday’s playoff game between the Los Angeles Lakers and the Denver Nuggets, superstar LeBron James was spotted carrying what appeared to be an unreleased version of the Pill speaker from Apple’s Beats brand. The original Beats Pill was a […]

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Macworld

Often you’ll be required to fill in a PDF on your Mac. Maybe you are applying for a loan, returning an item to a shop, making a request, or applying for a job. Whatever it is, it’s likely that the document you need to fill in is a PDF. This is because PDF is a universal format for documents and it works on Windows, macOS, Android or iOS–and looks the same on whichever platform you open it on.

That’s all fine, but it can be annoying to have to print it out, fill it in with a pen (which requires actual writing!) and then either scan it so you can email, or put it in the mail. Nobody wants to be wasting their time with those shenanigans.

So, what do you do when faced with PDF forms? Luckily it is easy to fill in a PDF on your Mac, and you don’t have to buy expensive software to do it. You can edit a PDF on a Mac for free.

PROMOTION

EaseUS PDF Editor Makes Mac PDF Editing Easier...

Apple on Tuesday announced that it will hold a special event on May 7. Although the company doesn’t usually discuss the topics of the event, the invitation artwork makes it clear that it will be all about iPad – as we can see an Apple Pencil in it. To add fuel to the fire, Apple CEO Tim Cook hinted that we’ll see at least a new Apple Pencil 3 next month.

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